It is a challenge in teaching early modern philosophy to balance historical faithfulness to the arguments and concerns of early modern philosophers and interpreting them as relevant to the kinds of thinking that contemporary undergraduate students find plausible. Early modern philosophy is unique, however, in applying modern scientific method directly to problems concerning nonphysical aspects of reality that our contemporary scientific thought, and with it mainstream contemporary culture, no longer find amenable (...) in their own, independent right to reliable reasoned approaches. At the same time, early modern philosophy often also takes seriously purely conceptual or logically consequential thought in the investigation of these topics, as our mainstream contemporary culture does not. This kind of thought, we argue, is distinctive of philosophy in general and appropriate to nonphysical aspects of reality. Early modern philosophy, then, offers a bridge between the kind of reasoned, objective thought our mainstream culture finds plausible and thought about nonphysical reality or, in general, the thought that characterizes philosophy. (shrink)

Early Modern Philosophy Reconsidered: Essays in Honor of Paul Hoffman is an international collection of essays from both well-established and younger scholars. In keeping with the example of Hoffman's own work, the essays are written in the spirit of promoting serious philosophical engagement with the historical figures they discuss. Among the philosophers whose views are explored in the collection are Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley, and Kant."--Publisher's website.

Margaret J. Osler - Early Modern Philosophy: Mind, Matter, and Metaphysics - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.3 478-479 Christia Mercer and Eileen O'Neill, editors. Early Modern Philosophy: Mind, Matter, and Metaphysics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. xxi + 298. Cloth, $55.00. The editors of this collection of essays by the late Margaret Wilson's former students and colleagues present this book "as a (...) snapshot of state-of-the-art history of early modern philosophy" . Many of the usual suspects make an appearance in these pages: Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Malebranche, and Kant. A couple of new faces also come on stage: Damaris Cudworth , best known as Locke's companion but presented here as a philosopher in her own right, and the Cartesian Bernard le Bouvier de.. (shrink)

Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy is an annual series, presenting a selection of the best current work in the history of early modern philosophy. It focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant. It also publishes papers on thinkers or movements outside of that framework, provided they are important in illuminating early modern thought. The (...) articles in OSEMP will be of importance to specialists within the discipline, but the editors also intend that they should appeal to a larger audience of philosophers, intellectual historians, and others who are interested in the development of modern thought. (shrink)

This volume showcases the best current work now being written on a wide range of issues in early modern philosophy, when some of the most influential current philosophical problems were first identified by figures like Locke, Berkeley, Kant, Spinoza, and Descartes. Collectively the articles exemplify the wide range of methodological perspectives currently being employed by top figures in the field. Indeed the selling point of the volume is the very high level of the fourteen contributors, each of (...) whom has a highly distinguished international reputation. (shrink)

The early modern period in Western philosophy is the source of many of our most powerful and seductive intellectual commitments. While we may disagree with philosophers of this period, the terms of philosophical inquiry and our standards of rational argumentation are in part derived from the work of Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Kant. For this reason, we will pursue a rigorous and sustained introduction to this episode of human intellectual history. We will cover topics in (...) Metaphysics, Epistemology and Philosophy of Mind. (shrink)

The History of Western Philosophy of Religion brings together an international team of over 100 leading scholars to provide authoritative exposition of how history's most important philosophical thinkers - from antiquity to the present day - have sought to analyse the concepts and tenets central to Western religious belief, especially Christianity. Divided chronologically into five volumes, The History of Western Philosophy of Religion is designed to be accessible to a wide range of readers, from the scholar looking for (...) original insight and the latest research findings to the student wishing for a masterly encapsulation of a particular philosopher's views. Together these volumes provide an indispensable resource for anyone conducting research or teaching in the philosophy of religion and related fields, such as theology, religious studies, the history of philosophy, and the history of ideas. Volume 3 covers the early modern period which witnessed a revolution in science and natural philosophy that swept away two millennia of Aristotelian certainty in a human-centred universe. Covering some of the most important figures in the history of Western thought - notably Descartes, Locke, Hume and Kant - Early Modern Philosophy of Religion charts the philosophical understanding of religion at a time of intellectual and spiritual revolution. (shrink)

Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy is an annual series, presenting a selection of the best current work in the history of early modern philosophy. It focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant. It also publishes work on thinkers or movements outside of that framework, provided they are important in illuminating early modern thought. The core (...) of the subject matter is philosophy and its history. But the volume’s chapters reflect the fact that philosophy in the early modern period was much broader in scope than it is currently taken to be and included a great deal of what now belongs to the natural sciences. Furthermore, philosophy in the period was closely connected with other disciplines, such as theology, law, and medicine, and with larger questions of social, political, and religious history. Volume XI includes chapters dedicated to a wide set of topics in the philosophies of René Descartes, Johann Clauberg, Louis de La Forge, Benedict Spinoza, Margaret Cavendish, Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, Mary Astell, and Damaris Masham. (shrink)

Part of the Blackwell Readings in the History of Philosophy series, this survey of early modern philosophy focuses on the key texts and philosophers of the period whose beliefs changed the course of western thought.

In a powerful and original contribution to the history of ideas, Hannah Dawson explores the intense preoccupation with language in early-modern philosophy, and presents a groundbreaking analysis of John Locke's critique of words. By examining a broad sweep of pedagogical and philosophical material from antiquity to the late seventeenth century, Dr Dawson explains why language caused anxiety in writers such as Montaigne, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Gassendi, Nicole, Pufendorf, Boyle, Malebranche and Locke. Locke, Language and Early-Modern (...) Philosophy demonstrates that new developments in philosophy, in conjunction with weaknesses in linguistic theory, resulted in serious concerns about the capacity of words to refer to the world, the stability of meaning, and the duplicitous power of words themselves. Dr Dawson shows that language so fixated all manner of early-modern authors because it was seen as an obstacle to both knowledge and society. She thereby uncovers a novel story about the problem of language in philosophy, and in the process reshapes our understanding of early-modern epistemology, morality and politics. (shrink)

Early modern philosophers looked for inspiration to the later ancient thinkers when they rebelled against the dominant Platonic and Aristotelian traditions. The impact of the Hellenistic philosophers on such philosophers as Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza and Locke was profound and is ripe for reassessment. This collection of essays offers precisely that. Leading historians of philosophy explore the connections between Hellenistic and early modern philosophy in ways that take advantage of new scholarly and philosophical advances. The (...) essays display a challenging range of methods and will be an invaluable point of reference for philosophers, historians of ideas and classicists. (shrink)

In this book, Martin Lenz provides the first reconstruction of intersubjective accounts of the mind in early modern philosophy. Some phenomena are easily recognised as social or interactive: certain dances, forms of work and rituals require interaction to come into being or count as valid. But what about mental states, such as thoughts, volitions, or emotions? Do our minds also depend on other minds? The idea that our minds are intersubjective or social seems to be a recent (...) one, developed mainly in the 19th and 20th centuries against the individualism of early modern philosophers. By contrast, this book argues that well-known early modern philosophers often started from the idea that minds are intersubjective. How then does a mind depend on the minds of others? Early modern philosophers are well known to have developed a number of theories designed to explain how we cognize external objects. What is hardly recognized is that early modern philosophers also addressed the problem of how our cognition is influenced by other minds. This book provides a historical and rational reconstruction of three central, but different, early modern accounts of the influence that minds exert on one another: Spinoza's metaphysical model, Locke's linguistic model, and Hume's medical model. Showing for each model of mental interaction (1) why it was developed, (2) how it construes mind-mind relations, and (3) what view of the mind it suggests, this book aims at uncovering a crucial part of the unwritten history of intersubjectivity in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This book is a study of the philosophy of the early 18th century Irish philosopher George Berkeley in the intellectual context of his times, with a particular focus on how, for Berkeley, mind is related to its ideas. It does not assume that thinkers like Descartes, Malebranche, or Locke define for Berkeley the context in which he develops his own thought. Instead, he indicates how Berkeley draws on a tradition that informed his early training and that challenges (...) much of the early modern thought with which he is often associated. Specifically, the book indicates how Berkeley's distinctive treatment of mind (as the activity whereby objects are differentiated and related to one another) highlights how mind neither precedes the existence of objects nor exists independently of them. This distinctive way of understanding the relation of mind and objects allows Berkeley to appropriate ideas from his contemporaries in a manner that transforms the issues with which he is engaged. The resulting insights--for example, about how God creates the minds that perceive objects--are only now starting to be fully appreciated. (shrink)

Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy presents a selection of the best current work in the history of early modern philosophy. It focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant.

Presents several articles on the modern philosophy and biological perspective on life science.

This new anthology of early modern philosophy enriches the possibilities for teaching this period by highlighting not only metaphysics and epistemology, but also new themes such as virtue, equality and difference, education, the passions, and love. It contains the works of forty-three philosophers, including traditionally taught figures such as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, as well as less familiar writers such as Lord Shaftesbury, Anton Amo, Julien Offray de La Mettrie, and Denis Diderot. It (...) also highlights the contributions of women philosophers, including Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Gabrielle Suchon, Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz, and Emilie Du Châtelet. (shrink)

Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy presents a selection of the best current work in the history of early modern philosophy. It focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant.

This introductory article outlines how this special issue contributes to existing scholarship that calls for a rethinking and re-evaluation of common assumptions about early modern philosophy. One way of challenging existing narratives is by questioning what role systems or systematicity play during this period. Another way of rethinking early modern philosophy is by considering assumptions about the role of philosophy itself and how philosophy can effect change in those who form philosophical beliefs (...) or engage in philosophical argumentation. A further way of advancing early modern scholarship is by examining the tight links between early modern views on metaphysics and epistemology, on the one hand, and moral, social, and political philosophy, on the other hand. Moreover, there are ongoing debates whether and how the traditional distinction between rationalism and empiricism, which has been questioned for several reasons, should be replaced. It has been proposed to replace it with a distinction between experimental and speculative philosophy, but this distinction cannot easily accommodate early modern debates concerning moral, social, and political philosophy. In addition to highlighting several ways how early modern philosophy has and can be rethought, we summarize how the papers in this special issue contribute to these ongoing efforts. (shrink)

This book re-examines the roles of causation and cognition in early modern philosophy. The standard historical narrative suggests that early modern thinkers abandoned Aristotelian models of formal causation in favor of doctrines that appealed to relations of efficient causation between material objects and cognizers. This narrative has been criticized in recent scholarship from at least two directions. Scholars have emphasized that we should not think of the Aristotelian tradition in such monolithic terms, and that many (...) early modern thinkers did not unequivocally reduce all causation to efficient causation. -/- In line with this general approach, this book features original essays written by leading experts in early modern philosophy. It is organized around five guiding questions: -/- What are the entities involved in causal processes leading to cognition? What type(s) or kind(s) of causality are at stake? Are early modern thinkers confined to efficient causation or do other types of causation play a role? What is God's role in causal processes leading to cognition? How do cognitive causal processes relate to other, non-cognitive causal processes? Is the causal process in the case of human cognition in any way special? How does it relate to processes involved in the case of non-human cognition? -/- The essays explore how fifteen early modern thinkers answered these questions: Francisco Suárez, René Descartes, Louis de la Forge, Géraud de Cordemoy, Nicolas Malebranche, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch de Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Ralph Cudworth, Margaret Cavendish, John Locke, John Sergeant, George Berkeley, David Hume, and Thomas Reid. The volume is unique in that it explores both well-known and understudied historical figures, and in that it emphasizes the intimate relationship between causation and cognition to open up new perspectives on early modern philosophy of mind and metaphysics. (shrink)

This book explores different accounts of powers and abilities in early modern philosophy. It analyzes powers and abilities as a package, hopefully enabling us to better understand them both and to see similarities as well as dissimilarities. While some prominent early modern accounts of power have been studied in detail, this volume covers lesser-known thinkers and several early modern women philosophers. The volume also investigates early modern accounts of powers and abilities (...) in a more systematic fashion than has been previously done. By broadening its scope in these ways, the volume uncovers trends and tendencies in early modern thinking about powers and abilities that are easy to miss. The chapters explore how twenty-two early modern thinkers approached the following questions: What kind of entities are powers and abilities? Are they reducible to something categorical or not? What is the relation between powers and abilities? Is there a fundamental metaphysical difference between them or not? How do we know what powers objects have and what abilities agents have? Are human abilities in any way special? How do they relate to the abilities non-human animals have? And how do they relate to the powers of inanimate objects? Powers and Abilities in Early Modern Philosophy will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in the history of early modern philosophy, in metaphysics, and in the history of science. (shrink)

Oxford University Press is proud to announce an annual volume presenting a selection of the best new work in the history of philosophy. Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy will focus on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant. It will also publish papers on thinkers or movements outside of that framework, provided they are important in illuminating (...) class='Hi'>early modern thought. The articles in OSEMP will be of importance to specialists within the discipline, but the editors also intend that they should appeal to a larger audience of philosophers, intellectual historians, and others who are interested in the development of modern thought. (shrink)

Three general accounts of causation stand out in early modern philosophy: Cartesian interactionism, occasionalism, and Leibniz's preestablished harmony. The contributors to this volume examine these theories in their philosophical and historical context. They address them both as a means for answering specific questions regarding causal relations and in their relation to one another, in particular, comparing occasionalism and the preestablished harmony as responses to Descartes's metaphysics and physics and the Cartesian account of causation. Philosophers discussed include Descartes, (...) Gassendi, Malebranche, Arnauld, Leibniz, Bayle, La Forge, and other, less well-known figures. (shrink)

In the seventeenth century the microscope opened up a new world of observation, and, according to Catherine Wilson, profoundly revised the thinking of scientists and philosophers alike. The interior of nature, once closed off to both sympathetic intuition and direct perception, was now accessible with the help of optical instruments. The microscope led to a conception of science as an objective, procedure-driven mode of inquiry and renewed interest in atomism and mechanism. Focusing on the earliest forays into microscopical research, from (...) 1620 to 1720, this book provides us with both a compelling technological history and a lively assessment of the new knowledge that helped launch philosophy into the modern era. Wilson argues that the discovery of the microworld--and the apparent role of living animalcula in generation, contagion, and disease--presented metaphysicians with the task of reconciling the ubiquity of life with human-centered theological systems. It was also a source of problems for philosophers concerned with essences, qualities, and the limits of human knowledge, whose positions are echoed in current debates about realism and instrument-mediated knowledge. Covering the contributions of pioneering microscopists (Leeuwenhoek, Swammerdam, Malpighi, Grew, and Hooke) and the work of philosophers interested in the microworld (Bacon, Descartes, Leibniz, Malebranche, Locke, and Berkeley), she challenges historians who view the abstract sciences as the sole catalyst of the Scientific Revolution as she stresses the importance of observational and experimental science to the modern intellect. (shrink)

Note from the Editors Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy covers the period that begins, very roughly, ... The core of the subject matter is, of course, philosophy and its history. But the volume's papers reflect the fact that ...

Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy presents a selection of the best current work in the history of early modern philosophy. It focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries -- the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant.

This Encyclopedia offers a fresh, integrated and creative perspective on the formation and foundations of philosophy and science in European modernity. Combining careful contextual reconstruction with arguments from traditional philosophy, the book examines methodological dimensions, breaks down traditional oppositions such as rationalism vs. empiricism, calls attention to gender issues, to ‘insiders and outsiders’, minor figures in philosophy, and underground movements, among many other topics. In addition, and in line with important recent transformations in the fields of history (...) of science and early modern philosophy, the volume recognizes the specificity and significance of early modern science and discusses important developments including issues of historiography (such as historical epistemology), the interplay between the material culture and modes of knowledge, expert knowledge and craft knowledge. This book stands at the crossroads of different disciplines and combines their approaches – particularly the history of science, the history of philosophy, contemporary philosophy of science, and intellectual and cultural history. It brings together over 100 philosophers, historians of science, historians of mathematics, and medicine offering a comprehensive view of early modern philosophy and the sciences. It combines and discusses recent results from two very active fields: early modern philosophy and the history of (early modern) science. (shrink)

Difficulties with periodization are often symptoms of internal diseases affecting the history of philosophy. Renaissance scholars and historians of early modern philosophy represent two scholarly communities that do not communicate with each other, as if an abrupt change of scenery had taken place from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, from the age of Campanella to the age of Descartes. The assumption of an arbitrary division between these two periods continues to have unfortunate effects on the (...) study of the history of philosophy. This chapter provides a diagnosis of this problem by looking at the way in which periodization crystallized in the history of philosophy. It then lays a foundation for attempting a new approach to this issue, which consists in mapping direct connections and conceptual links of seventeenth-century philosophers with the philosophies of the Renaissance. We intend to shift the weight from the problem of assessing the ‘modernity’ of Renaissance philosophers to the creation of a space of interaction between Renaissance and early modern thinkers in the spirit of ‘conversation’, with special attention to tracing sources, direct allusions, confutations and continuities. (shrink)

Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy is an annual series, presenting a selection of the best current work in the history of early modern philosophy. It focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries -- the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant. It also publishes papers on thinkers or movements outside of that framework, provided they are important in illuminating early modern (...) thought. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The medieval background The emergence of modern science Materialism and dualism Empirical philosophies of nature Rationalist philosophy of nature Empires, naturism, and fideism.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.1 (2002) 121-122 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy Jill Kraye and M. W. F. Stone, editors. Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2000. Pp. xii + 270. Cloth, $75.00 Early-modern philosophy begins in the seventeenth century. This book, based on a colloquium at the Warburg (...) Institute, London in 1997, strives at extending the limits of this period into the sixteenth and fifteenth centuries. Thus "the long-standing exclusion of the Renaissance from the standard philosophical curriculum" (xii) should come to an end by acknowledging its being an integral part of early modern philosophy and its relevance for an understanding of modern thought. The distinctive element of the Renaissance was, according to the editors, humanism, understood as the revival of ancient sources from the fourteenth century on, and its impact on the shaping of modern thought by these sources.One can identify the following types of argument offered in the twelve contributions to this book: (1) Renaissance humanists mediated classical sources into the seventeenth and following centuries either by translating Greek texts into Latin (Lohr on Aristotle commentaries) or by offering new interpretations that were to become standard (Hankins on Ficino and Galileo, and Mercer on the German Platonists). (2) Ancient modes of thought, mediated through the Renaissance, shaped modern philosophy (Stone on Aristotelian and Reformed ethics, Levi on Stoicism in Justus Lipsius, Kraye on Marcus Aurelius editions, and Osler on Gassendi and Aristotle). (3) Humanist literary forms and mentalities survived in modern thought (Bianchi on dialogue, Vickers on rhetoric in Bacon, and James on 'grandeur' and scientific argument).Two papers do not fit into this scheme: in "The Theology of Lorenzo Valla," the only paper dealing directly with a Renaissance humanist, Monfasani wants to prove that "Valla was no theologian." Monfasani does this on the basis of a very narrow concept of dogmatic correctness, blaming Valla continuously for being banal, to the effect that the paper does not contribute to the topic of the book. One could well connect Valla's theological issues (free will, summum bonum, trinity, etc.) with his provocative stirring up of philosophy in general and show his influence on Protestant theology and on modern ethics.The other paper is by J. R. Milton, which is enlightening because it summarizes the prejudices against humanism in modern philosophy ("'Delicate learning,' erudition and the enterprise of philosophy"). He endorses "one of the most familiar narratives in European philosophy" (161), namely that Descartes's breakthrough was due to his total rupture [End Page 121] with the philosophical tradition, especially with contemporary humanist and scholastic thought. Thus Descartes's triumph was that of the myth of the irrelevance of history to philosophy as evident in Galileo, Locke, and even Hume. If antecedents are acknowledged, e.g., in Berkeley, then accepting that they "provide us either with an irreplaceable source of wisdom or with equally irreplaceable models for imitation, or indeed both" (167), still fails to recognize that the history of a philosophical problem is a part of that problem rather than just some general "wisdom" or a model for imitation. Of course, Milton repeats the myth of Bacon's anti-humanism, masterly refuted in this very book by Brian Vickers, and Milton believes that Valla "enthroned" "custom and example" and therefore for him "it would be difficult if not impossible to state Hempel's Raven Paradox" (169). One might wonder whether the conclusion: "All ravens are black --all non-black things are non-ravens," is the paramount of modern philosophy. But a thorough reader of Valla's logic might discover similarities to pragmatism, which are fostered by his deep criticism of language with the tools of Renaissance humanism. However, Descartes's indebtedness to Renaissance method and rhetoric is handbook knowledge today.The audience for this collection of samples are specialists either in seventeenth- or eighteenth-century philosophy, or in Renaissance thought, or even philosophers in the narrow sense of the disciplines. The latter are difficult to convince of the usefulness of historic studies or "erudite activity" (Milton... (shrink)

Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy presents selection of the best current work in the history of early modern philosophy. It focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hellenistic and Early Modern PhilosophyChristopher S. CelenzaJon Miller and Brad Inwood, editors. Hellenistic and Early Modern Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 330. Cloth, $60.00.There are at least two ways of writing the history of philosophy: the first and most common among those self-identified as "philosophers" treats philosophers of the past as if they were in live dialogue (...) with the present. Only the text is dissected, studied, and analyzed as the interpreter attempts to reconstruct, examine, and occasionally challenge the arguments under consideration. Practitioners of this first way assume that systematic and seemingly internally coherent styles of thought are most worthy of the name "philosophy." These thinkers believe that the term "philosophy," as Richard Rorty pointed out long ago, has an "honorific" sense: philosophy as such stands above other forms of thought, it is regulative in scope, and it serves as something that examines the conclusions of other, necessarily less rigorous fields. The second way is more explicitly contextualist, seeking to understand what a past thinker may have meant in his own time, what outside factors may have shaped his arguments, and how his thought may be part of broader historical currents that are none the less worthy of being remembered and studied now. Practitioners of this way are more likely to believe that ambiguities or seeming deficiencies of clarity that we find in the work of a past thinker are unlikely to be resolved by hypothetical, propositional reconstruction; rather the ambiguities are apparent to us because we are differently situated, so that the study of history is a more powerful tool in helping us satisfactorily access the work of a past thinker than rationalistic reconstruction. (Full disclosure: I am an advocate of the second way.) This volume presents studies that fall into both of the two camps, as Jerome Schneewind points out in his cogent introduction.The volume has a manifest unity: almost all of the articles are concerned in some way with different Hellenistic schools of thought and the way early modern thinkers used, re-imagined, and interpreted them. The studies are often meticulous and all are stimulating. Anthony Long offers a wonderfully synthetic presentation of ancient Stoicism as a coherent system, after which he examines the way Spinoza, Justus Lipsius, and the eighteenth-century Anglican bishop Joseph Butler measure up; unsurprisingly, they don't measure up that well. Margaret Osler seeks to illuminate the way Gassendi appropriated certain aspects of Epicureanism. Philip Mitsis argues that modern scholarship on Locke has not taken Locke's interest in Cicero's De officiis as a tool for teaching morality seriously. Donald Rutherford studies Leibniz's critique of Stoicism, which "centers," he writes, on their "failure to offer an adequate explanation of the nature of moral progress and of the dependence of human happiness on the hope for such progress" (62-63). Catherine Wilson presents a study of the corpuscular aspect of Epicurean natural philosophy among Leibniz and his contemporaries. Jon Miller eloquently and thoughtfully discusses the way Grotius and Spinoza worked with the natural law theory of the Stoics. Among a number of excellent articles, perhaps the most interesting is Stephen Menn's. Menn makes a compelling case that Descartes's intellectual autobiography in the Discourses may be seen as part of a tradition. In it, the writer presents himself as reaching a moment of dissatisfaction with the intellectual customs with which he has come into contact and as needing to strike off into new directions, unencumbered by the vestiges of those customs. While others, most notably Dan Garber, have shown that, as Menn puts it, "none of Descartes's contemporaries seem to have thought in 1637 that they were witnessing a revolution" (142), Menn's study is striking because it shows the depth of the tradition within which Descartes was working. Next, Gail Fine finds that the Cyrenaics, as presented by Sextus Empiricus, seem to have [End Page 207] endorsed "the view that there are truths, beliefs, and knowledge about the subjective" (214). Steven Nadler seeks to show that there is no mysticism in Spinoza's thought, even though it was not uncommon in Spinoza's own day to... (shrink)

This book is the first to concentrate on the problems of individuation and identity in early modern philosophy and to trace their philosophical development through the period in a coherent way.

This ambitious and important book, first published in 2001, provides a truly general account of Francis Bacon as a philosopher. It describes how Bacon transformed the values that had underpinned philosophical culture since antiquity by rejecting the traditional idea of a philosopher as someone engaged in contemplation of the cosmos. The book explores in detail how and why Bacon attempted to transform the largely esoteric discipline of natural philosophy into a public practice through a program in which practical science (...) provided a model that inspired many from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Stephen Gaukroger shows that this reform of natural philosophy was dependent on the creation of a new philosophical persona: a natural philosopher shaped through submission to the dictates of Baconian method. This book will be recognized as a major contribution to Baconian scholarship, of special interest to historians of early-modern philosophy, science, and ideas. (shrink)

Normativity has long been conceived as more properly pertaining to the domain of thought than to the domain of nature. This conception goes back to Kant and still figures prominently in contemporary epistemology, philosophy of mind and ethics. By offering a collection of new essays by leading scholars in early modern philosophy and specialists in contemporary philosophy, this volume goes beyond the point where nature and normativity came apart, and challenges the well-established opposition between these (...) all too neatly separated realms. It examines how the mind’s embeddedness in nature can be conceived as a starting point for uncovering the links between naturally and conventionally determined standards governing an agent’s epistemic and moral engagement with the world. The original essays are grouped in two parts. The first part focuses on specific aspects of theories of perception, thought formation and judgment. It gestures towards an account of normativity that regards linguistic conventions and natural constraints as jointly setting the scene for the mind’s ability to conceptualise its experiences. The second part of the book asks what the norms of desirable epistemic and moral practices are. Key to this approach is an examination of human beings as parts of nature, who act as natural causes and are determined by their sensibilities and sentiments. Each part concludes with a chapter that integrates features of the historical debate into the contemporary context.​. (shrink)

In the Early Modern time, moral philosophy underwent substantial changes. The most important among them were growing opposition to the theonomous understand...

This volume contains essays that examine infinity in early modern philosophy. The essays not only consider the ways that key figures viewed the concept. They also detail how these different beliefs about infinity influenced major philosophical systems throughout the era. These domains include mathematics, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, science, and theology. Coverage begins with an introduction that outlines the overall importance of infinity to early modern philosophy. It then moves from a general background of infinity (...) up through Kant. Readers will learn about the place of infinity in the writings of key early modern thinkers. The contributors profile the work of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant. Debates over infinity significantly influenced philosophical discussion regarding the human condition and the extent and limits of human knowledge. Questions about the infinity of space, for instance, helped lead to the introduction of a heliocentric solar system as well as the discovery of calculus. This volume offers readers an insightful look into all this and more. It provides a broad perspective that will help advance the present state of knowledge on this important but often overlooked topic. (shrink)

Some of these authors have “mixed” views: for example, MacKenzie (and perhaps Arbini) ... Topics in Early Modern Philosophy of Mind, Studies in the History ..

Sixteen essays on epistemology, metaphysics, & history & politics, treating aspects of the writings of Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Leibniz, & Hobbes.

As José Benardete observes, "the concept of the infinite is found to impinge on almost the whole schedule of ontological questions" (Infinity, viii). This is especially true for the early moderns, for whom questions like the following were still very much in play: Does the world have a beginning? Are there bounds to the spatial extent of the world? How does an imperfect creation flow from an infinitely perfect creator? How does the infinite divisibility of the continuum relate to (...) the structure of the material world? How are human actions related to the (possibly) infinite chain of causes or influences that shape our behaviors? Far from being an esoteric topic, which is best relegated to the outskirts of metaphysics or mathematics, infinity has tendrils reaching into nearly every philosophical domain. (shrink)

Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant. It also publishes papers on thinkers or movements outside of that framework, provided they are important in illuminating early modern thought.

This chapter aims to present some of the highlights of the early modern debate about slavery. We will start by exploring theoretical debates about slavery by nature. As we will see, several authors view natural slavery as incompatible with widely held doctrines about human equality and natural liberty. Yet we will also see that many early modern authors are sympathetic to natural slavery—perhaps surprisingly so. Moreover, we will see that even in texts that are not explicitly (...) about transatlantic slavery, natural slavery is often tied to race. Next, we turn to theoretical debates about circumstantial slavery. We will see that most early modern authors accept at least some instances of this type of justification. It is only in the mid-eighteenth century that some prominent philosophers reject circumstantial slavery categorically, though there are earlier philosophers who argue against some forms of it while accepting others. Finally, we will examine the portion of the debate that is explicitly about transatlantic slavery. As one would expect, racial natural slavery plays a major role in this debate. What is surprising, however, is that race enters the debate earlier than one might think. As early as the 1680s, when theories of race were still in their infancy, critics of transatlantic slavery argue that racial bias fuels transatlantic slavery and that proponents of slavery view Black people as subhuman and as natural slaves. (shrink)

The essays in this collection are all studies in the history of modern philosophy. Together they provide a cross-section of current efforts to reconstruct ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Socializing Minds: Intersubjectivity in Early Modern Philosophy by Martin LenzBenjamin HillMartin Lenz. Socializing Minds: Intersubjectivity in Early Modern Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. 272. Hardback, $80.00.What Lenz proposes in this book is nothing short of revolutionary: rejecting the hegemony of individualistic interpretations of early modern philosophies of mind and replacing (some of) them with intersubjectivist interpretations. It (...) is a brash but intriguing thesis.According to Lenz, the hegemonic character of early modern individualism results from a “Rylean” historiography, namely, interpretative approaches assuming that “mentalism” (that mind is characterized in opposition to physical behavior) entails individualism (that minds develop independently of other minds). To counteract this, Lenz aims to show how three canonical figures—Spinoza, Locke, and Hume—held strong intersubjective accounts of the mind despite being mentalists. They came to recognize, argues Lenz, that there was a “contact problem” (3) between mentalistic minds, and they used intersubjective principles [End Page 665] to resolve this contact problem. Thus, because of the intersubjectivist ways they addressed the contact problem, they should be interpreted as intersubjectivists about the mind (3–6).Lenz identifies all three philosophers as intersubjectivists. But because each resolved the contact problem in different ways, each offered a different model of intersubjectivity. Spinoza offered a “metaphysical model” (9) that sees interactions between minds arising from their contrary natures. Locke offered a “linguistic model” (9) that sees interactions between minds happening through language, which is “socially determined.” Finally, Hume offered a “medical model” (9) that sees mental states as sympathetically shared between minds (9). Lenz claims he chose these three authors because they “provide the ‘clearest’ accounts by beginning to work toward a solution to the ‘contact problem’ without already having one at hand.... [Thus,] I wish to present the chosen authors as case studies of the proposed models. Roughly put, all three authors encountered a theory of ideas that they must have thought needed revision so as to accommodate the interaction of minds” (13). The real challenge, then, for Lenz is to defend his attribution of these models of intersubjectivity to Spinoza, Locke, and Hume, respectively.In the Ethics, says Lenz, Spinoza confronted a peculiar form of the contact problem. Human minds contain prejudices, unfounded assumptions, and superstitions. Humans are largely ignorant of, if not mistaken about, the causes of these unfortunate beliefs and ideas. Many of these causes lie outside of us, and some of them even lie within other minds. These connections with other minds arise because the causes of ideas are themselves ideas and because human minds, being nothing more than bundles of ideas, are complex ideas themselves. Therefore, many of our ideas and beliefs come from other minds. But the situation for Spinoza is even more peculiar, according to Lenz. In some cases, the ideas and beliefs that come into one’s mind are the mistaken beliefs of another mind. So, Spinoza’s mind-mind interactions determine ideas by literally sharing ideas—in other words, by one mind placing its ideas into another mind. Thus, the question “how can those minds come into contact in order to determine and share ideas” is Spinoza’s version of the contact problem. Spinoza’s answer, says Lenz, involves the conatus of ideas. (Because minds have a conatus and minds are nothing but complex ideas, all individual ideas have their own conatus, argues Lenz.) The conatus of an idea is its will to affirm the existence of its object. Minds interact through the struggle of contrary conatus to affirm the existence of their objects. Because this struggle is a metaphysically dynamic event, rather than a merely logical one, Spinoza’s intersubjectivism takes the form of a metaphysical model. As a result, the holism of ideas that Spinoza develops is an intersubjective holism, what Lenz calls an “ecosystem of ideas” (77).Lenz sees Locke’s contact problem as arising from his “essence agnosticism” (101) (the idea that real essences are cognitively inaccessible). This essence agnosticism cuts Locke off from Aristotle’s answer for why we share cognitive content about substance ideas (viz. that our concepts derive from the same essences being contained in external objects). Because of this, says Lenz, Locke saw... (shrink)

This book shows that at the beginning of modern thought the revival of ancient skepticism challenged the powers of the intellect in making knowledge possible, opening the way to the consideration of language as an alternative to mental representation, thus leading to an early linguistic turn.